Zenith Celebrates 250 Years Of The USA With A A384 Revival Duo; Formex's Impressive Aria; A Summer Kollokium Projekt 02; A Transparent Albishorn Type X-Graph; David Candaux Goes Platinum And Onyx

Hey friends, welcome back to It’s About Time. I have no idea what’s going on, but the industry has shifted into seventh gear before this summer. There are so many releases over the past 10ish days that I’ll have to catch up for weeks, so sorry if your favorite release is not here yet. But it’s all good news.

In this issue

• Zenith Celebrates 250 Years Of The United States Of America With A Special A384 Revival Duo

• Formex's First Integrated Bracelet Watch Is Also Its Thinnest, Most Ambitious And Most Expensive

• Kollokium Gives The Projekt 02 A Summer Makeover With The Turquoise Water Theme

• Albishorn Type X-Graph Adds A Transparent Dial To The Type 10 Family

• David Candaux Goes Back to Where It All Started, In Platinum And Onyx

👂What’s new

1/

Zenith Celebrates 250 Years Of The United States Of America With A Special A384 Revival Duo

Zenith has a knack for wrapping a good story around a reissue, and that’s what they’re doing with the Chronomaster A384 Revival Liberty II. Sure, on its surface, a watch celebrating 250 years of the United States isn’t exactly the most original story. But there’s another story right behind if: Zenith founder Georges Favre-Jacot visited the United States in the 19th century, came back impressed by how Americans organized factory production, and rebuilt his Le Locle manufacture on the same integrated model. That building has been standing since 1865, still operational. So this isn't just anniversary marketing. There's an actual line between American manufacturing philosophy and the way Zenith makes watches.

The A384 is a faithful revival of the 1969 original, which means a 37mm wide, 12.6mm thick barrel-shaped case with pump-style pushers and angular proportions that read as thoroughly period-correct. The steel version gets a radial-brushed bezel with polished crown, pushers, and bevels. The forged carbon option does what forged carbon does, showing off the marbled grain across the case surfaces.

The Liberty II inverts the color scheme of last year's Revival Liberty by honoring the original A384's panda configuration: white lacquered background, dark blue sub-dials and tachymeter scale. The American flag references are worked in with restraint. The chronograph seconds hand alternates 13 red and white stripes for the original colonies. The "4" on the date disc and a "250" marker on the tachymeter scale are highlighted in red. No stars-and-stripes plastered across the dial. Zenith kept it subtle, and the watch is better for it.

Inside is the El Primero calibre 400, a direct descendant of the 1969 movement that made the A384 significant in the first place. It's an automatic, 5Hz column wheel chronograph with a horizontal clutch and 50 hours of power reserve. The steel version ships with a ladder-style steel bracelet inspired by the original Gay Frères design, plus a blue Cordura-effect rubber strap. The carbon model comes only with the rubber strap.

The Chronomaster A384 Revival Liberty II is a US-exclusive limited edition — 250 pieces in steel at $10,600, and 25 pieces in forged carbon at $13,400. See more on the Zenith website.

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Formex's First Integrated Bracelet Watch Is Also Its Thinnest, Most Ambitious And Most Expensive

The Biel-based independent Formex has spent years earning a reputation as the value-per-dollar champion of Swiss sports watches. Excellent ergonomics, practical engineering, the patented Case Suspension System, Formex built a loyal following by making tough, capable watches that punch well above their price. The new Aria Manufacture Chronometer is a different proposal entirely. Integrated bracelet, first proprietary movement, 6.9mm total thickness. This is Formex going somewhere it has never been before.

The Aria case is 40mm wide, 6.9mm thick including the sapphire crystal, and made from Grade 5 titanium. Lug-to-lug sits at 45.45mm, which is decently compact, and the whole package, watch and bracelet together, weighs just 78 grams. I tried one on in Geneva and its very light. The geometry here is nothing like previous Formex collections: rounded surfaces, soft transitions, brushed and polished areas blending without obvious borders. Each bracelet link is individually hand-brushed with mirror-polished bevels along the edges, and the patented micro-adjustment clasp extends 3mm on either side without any tools. Water resistance is mediocre at 30 meters.

Three dial colours launch with the Aria: Denso Blue, a matte navy; Selva Green, warmer and more organic; and Ardesia Grey, colder, more mineral. All three are stamped from a single brass piece, with a gently undulating surface that dips between each applied index and rises under each rose-gold-plated marker. That’s a really cool effect up close The recessed small seconds subdial sits at six o'clock, the rose-gold hands and indices contrast cleanly against the matte bases.

But even cooler than the already very nice dials is the calibre which Formex call the FX01. Developed by Horage and built on their K2 micro-rotor platform, its features full custom decoration in the Formex aesthetic. At 2.9mm thick, it runs a full silicon regulating organ (hairspring, escape wheel, pallet fork), beats at 25,200 vibrations per hour, and delivers over 72 hours of power reserve. The tungsten micro-rotor is integrated into the movement, and the finishing on the movement is substantive: black-gold galvanic treatment, vertically brushed bridges, laser-textured recesses, hand-finished bevels. The movement is also is COSC-certified.

The Formex Aria Manufacture Chronometer launches as a 100-piece founders edition with deliveries scheduled for September 2026. While this is undoubtedly a very, very cool watch, the most controversial thing about it since it was announced has been its price: €7,600, without tax. See more on the Formex website.

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Kollokium Gives The Projekt 02 A Summer Makeover With The Turquoise Water Theme

Kollokium has been doing really cool things since Manuel Emch, Barth Nussbaumer, and Amr Sindis launched the project in 2020. The Projekt 01, with its forest of individually set, Super-LumiNova-filled cylindrical pins, was one of the more original debut watches in recent memory. The Projekt 02 shifted the approach from pin art to topography, building nine-layer dial landscapes from individually hand-painted plates that evoke hypsometric relief maps. Variants A and B of the Projekt 02 already came and sold out. Now, for summer, there's Cooler Waters Variant C.

The case is unchanged from previous iterations. Die-cast steel gives you a monobloc construction with integrated lugs and bezel, 39mm wide and only 5.9mm thick. That measurement excludes the box sapphire crystal, which adds considerable visual height and lets you see the dial from the side. The valve-shaped crown and the K,P-nº2 relief on the left side of the case also remain unchanged. Water resistance is 50 meters. I wish they could go up to 100 with that.

The dial is just joyfully fantastic. Sixty-seven individually hand-painted plates are stacked into nine distinct layers, building up a topography that here looks like a bird's-eye view of open water with white-capped peaks as hour markers and progressively deeper turquoise settling into the troughs. The lacquer itself carries blue-emission Super-LumiNova, so the nine gradient tiers glow like crazy in the dark. Hour and minute hands in white are also filled with blue SLN.

Inside is the La Joux-Perret G101, the same automatic calibre used throughout the Projekt 02 line. It beats at 4Hz and has a 68-hour power reserve. The watch comes on an elastic single-piece textile strap in a turquoise that matches the dial, with a hook buckle in die-cast steel.

The Kollokium Projekt 02 Variant C Cooler Waters is a limited edition of 299 pieces, priced at CHF 3,666.66 without taxes. Public sales open on Tuesday, 2 June at 14:00 CET. Delivery will happen between June 3 and June 15. See more on the Kollokium website.

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Albishorn Type X-Graph Adds A Transparent Dial To The Type 10 Family

I’ve said it a dozen times, Albishorn is truly one of the most interesting young brands working right now. The Swiss independent, founded by Sébastien Chaulmontet and designed by Fabien Collioud, builds watches that exist in a alternate universe — instruments that could have been built to serve specific ppurposes, but weren't. The Maxigraph imagined a 1930s regatta chronograph, the Type 10 a 1940s ancestor of the famous Type 20 pilot's watches. The Type X-Graph is the latest chapter: a 1948 prototype, a watch that would have been conceived in the gap between the Type 10 and the Type 20 that eventually defined the genre.

The case is 39mm wide, 12mm thick (11mm without the box sapphire), with a lug-to-lug of 47.7mm. It’s made out of, with satin-brushed surfaces and polished bevels. The bidirectional bezel is slightly larger than the case at 41.7mm, made from gunmetal PVD-coated steel and engraved with a 60-minute scale filled with lacquer and Super-LumiNova. Crown at 10:30. Alongside it, a large red anodized aluminium monopusher on the left side handles all chronograph functions — start, stop, reset — in one control activated with the thumb. Water resistance is 100 meters.

The dial is what’s brand new and it’s very cool. It's polycarbonate, translucent, fumé anthracite, and its texture matches the granular finish of the metal-dial Type 10 models exactly. Depending on how light catches it, the surface appears near-black or smoky grey, and through that grey you can see the skeletonized dial side of the movement. Legibility is uncompromised: large luminous Arabic numerals and white-painted hands packed with Super-LumiNova. Sub-dials sit at 4:30 and 7:30, maintaining the Type 10's unusual dashboard-inspired layout. A patented operating indicator at 12 o'clock shows black, red, or white to confirm whether the chronograph is reset, running, or stopped.

The calibre ALB04 M is a proprietary movement built on a reworked Sellita SW510M Mp, which shares its architecture with the 7750. Slimmed to 5.7mm, COSC-certified, running at 28,800 vibrations per hour with 65 hours of power reserve. The watch ships with black and taupe leather straps and a steel bracelet is available as an option.

The Albishorn Type X-Graph goes on sale May 29, 2026, limited to 99 pieces produced over three years. Priced at CHF 4,250 on strap, and CHF 4,700 on the steel bracelet, excluding taxes. See more on the Albishorn website.

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David Candaux Goes Back to Where It All Started, In Platinum And Onyx

David Candaux grew up in Le Solliat, trained in the Vallée de Joux, spent years at Jaeger-LeCoultre working on the kind of projects most watchmakers never get near, and in 2017 launched his epnymous brand with the DC1. That watch established everything his work stands for: an asymmetrical case with a descending architecture, an off-center time display, a 30-degree inclined flying tourbillon, and the Magic Crown at 6 o'clock, a retractable pusher mechanism with 31 parts that vanishes flush into the case when not in use. The new DC1 Platinum Art of the Tourbillon is a throwback to all of those essentials, but now with new materials.

The platinum case measures 43mm wide and 10.02mm thick, rising to 12.9mm with the tinted, AR-coated sapphire crystal that slopes to follow the dial's descending construction. Platinum is punishing to finish, especially on a case built from steep transitions, polished curves, and sharp edges. Candaux does it entirely by hand. Water resistance is 30 meters.

The earlier DC1 used textured gold surfaces and a generally lighter look. Here, the central plate is made out of mirror-polished black onyx, and the difference in mood is immediate. Flanking the domed, faceted opal time display and the tourbillon cage are hand-finished 18k rose gold flanges. Hour markers at cardinal positions are hand-bevelled and polished 18k white gold; numerals and minute track are pad-printed in black. The hands are rose gold, hand-polished, syringe-shaped. A titanium hand at 12 o'clock indicates the power reserve through a small aperture.

The flying tourbillon at 9 o'clock is inclined at 30 degrees, a deliberate engineering choice that ensures that the tilted cage passes through more wrist positions during operation, helping keep more accurate time. The cage is black anodised titanium, finished via micro-arc oxidation directly into the metal. Inside the case, the hand-wound calibre H74 is tilted three degrees, reinforcing the cascading architecture visible through the sapphire caseback. The movement uses titanium for both bridges and plates, something very few independents bother with. Finishing is classical: hand-polished bevels, circular graining, Côtes du Solliat, gold chatons. The movement beats at 21,600vph and has a 55 hour power reserve. The watch is worn on a textured black rubber strap with a Velcro closure and quick-release system.

The David Candaux DC1 Platinum Art of the Tourbillon is a limited edition of eight pieces, priced at CHF 248,000. See more on the David Candaux website.

⏲️End links

A bunch of links that might or might not have something to do with watches. One thing’s for sure - they’re interesting

• “Where are all the other landline people?” The question surfaces midway through Jeremy Rellosa’s brisk, sharply observed diary of his month-long experiment in bygone technology. He’s on the F Train where, relieved of his portable distraction device, he discovers that there are still advertisements for a decades-old sitcom above his fellow commuters. A beat later, he mourns his family group chat, replaced by voicemails from his mother that are only available through the cream-colored Trimline telephone he’s plugged into his modem for service. A testament to the cleverness, detail, and personal consideration that a scant 1,800 words can hold.

• Last year, after noticing more rabbits out and about, including one in his own backyard, The Local’s Nicholas Hune-Brown set off to find out whether there were, in fact, more wild bunnies in Toronto. Friends and neighbors also noticed them everywhere, but the wildlife experts, conservationists, and city employees he spoke to couldn’t confirm what everyone was seeing. Stranger still, it seemed like no one cared to know. Hune-Brown decided to dig deeper, turning his rabbit obsession into a delightful piece on urban nature—and a bunny-boom mystery that seems to remain unresolved.

• Cute and quirky-looking, capybaras are the internet’s favorite chill giant rodent. Erick Trickey’s Slate piece complicates that image considerably. Some of Brazil’s roughly 1.2 million capybaras have migrated from Brazil’s wild habitats into its cities, swapping its natural predators like jaguars and anacondas for a new set of dangers: cars, dogs, humans, and river detritus that can injure and strangle them. But Trickey also finds people who are doing good, from local vets to volunteers who look after the capybaras living along the Pinheiros River, cutting trash entangling their necks. The story is a sober one, and a reminder that internet fame offers wildlife zero protection.

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